Uwe Johnson’s Anniversaries is structured as a day-by-day sequence of entries, taking us from August 21, 1967 to August 20, 1968. The central character we follow through the hours of this year is Gesine Cresspahl, and trust me this year is worth following. To that end, I’m rereading the book, day-by-day, starting, of course, this August 21. I invite you to join me. The book is a masterpiece and taking it a day at a time will make its size surprisingly manageable.
To facilitate a readalong, entries of the following week in the life of Gesine (sadly our days of the week do not line up with 1967-1968). The first will go up on the evening of August 20 and will cover August 21 – 27.
To facilitate a readalong, I have created a home page specifically for it.
It is on the other end of this link!
There you can find all of the posts, links, and anything else I think might add to the experience. It is live already, so you can go check it out and let me know if you have any suggestions.
Please consider joining in on this experience. The book is a masterpiece, and I think a day-by-day reading of it is not only a manageable but also an ideal way to read the book. I cannot wait for it to all begin!
Likely there will be some threads over at our Goodreads group, too, but as of now that hasn’t happened yet. If it does, I’ll be sure to update the main readalong page with that information.
I hope you’re starting a lovely August and that you’ll seriously consider this invitation to join in!
Very tempted, although I have so many other reading projects going on… and will I be able to stop at one a day?
I too am tempted. My copy has been sitting on my shelf for some time now, still wrapped in its plastic seal. I’ve always found an excuse not to start such a whopper. Let’s hope your readalong will be the motivation I need to break that seal and get reading.
Trevor, last year I decided to wait until this month to start reading the book and to do a day-by-day read. Not surprisingly, it seems a lot of people have also thought that might be an interesting way to read the book (and also a way to make its 650,000+ word length seem more manageable). Unlike most others, who have settled on August 21st as their start date, I will be starting on August 20th. There is about 1500 words of the novel before we get to the first diary entry, so I am making reading that its own separate day. I also decided that I want to try a write-along as I read, writing something brief after each day’s read. I am not yet convinced that this will be worth carrying through for the full year, but I’m giving it a shot to see if it does.
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I thought about joining in with a day-by-day read-along with others, but I think I would rather just read by myself for the most part. I will probably check in with what’s going on here once every week or so. It’s a long book and I am not going to hold myself to any reading plan if, in the course of reading the book, it seems like it might be worth changing things up. When I read Tender Is The Night a couple of years ago, I started with a plan to read one chapter per day for two months. After the first week, and three plan changes later, I decided to read three chapters per day where I would re-read the two most recent chapters I had read the previous two days and then add one new chapter each day (eg; I read chapters 12, 13, and 14 one day and then chapters 13, 14, and 15 the next day). After 67 consecutive days of reading, I got to the end of the book. I think I will do the same thing with Anniversaries. That means that if I stick to this plan for the year, I will actually read the novel THREE times by the time I get to the end, turning a 650,000+ word read into a 2,000,000 word read!!! …. Yeah, I know….
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Looking forward to starting this in 18 days time. Best of luck to all who also decide to take on the challenge!
I’m definitely more interested in folks (including myself) reading the book, however they like to, than in having any major conversations here. I suspect there won’t be but a few participants, with ebbs and flows, etc., over the course of the year, and that the posts may be more a collection of some of my own thoughts and favorite aspects as we move through it. So however you wish to read the book, David, though I do hope periodically you will say how things are going for you. I recommend folks follow your example and change things up if it ever starts to feel like a chore!
Marina and Simon, do it if you can! I’d love to do this journey with you!
I have the books and will be joining in. Looking forward to it.
I will join you in this. Gives me a reason to buy the book other than to look at on the bookshelf. Looking forward to it.
Cheers
Cordelia
I followed the trail here from the reddit nyrbclassics thread. I’ll join in as well
Today, for the first time, I took the first volume out of the slipcase to have a look. What a joy – It’s been a while since I’ve read a book with such nice paper and feel. I am now glad I didn’t opt for the kindle version, and I see that the daily entries are so short that I don’t need to worry about catching up after being away for a few days.
Just a brief reminder: Today is the 15th. The 21st approaches fast and for me, the 20th is coming even faster. I have decided that this weekend I will go shopping for one of those one year journals that gives you a page per day so I can write a daily response to my daily read. The paper journal seems more in keeping with the book than doing it electronically and using a journal also will enforce a maximum length I can write each day.
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Now if only I could find a journal for 2017. It would have the right days of the week for the book (well, until December 31st anyway. I’d need a 2108 journal for January-August. Actually, since 1968 is a leap year, I would need …. a journal from 1996 or 2024 …. Seems unlikely. Oh well.)
Yes, the first post is up and ready when folks go to it here.
I’ve been in touch with Mr. Searls who said he also recommends folks start on August 20, so that’s my plan as well (even though the dates on this post are August 21 – 27).
[…] to read the ‘one entry a day’ readalong for Uwe Johnson’s Anniversaries on the Mookse and Gripes site and am trying to stay clear of the temptation to reread Proust in preparation for Backlisted […]